Draw a map of the brain when fear and anxiety are involved, and the amygdala – the brain’s almond-shaped center for panic and fight-or-flight responses – looms large. But the amygdala doesn’t do its job alone. Scientists at Emory University have recently built upon work from others, extending the fear map to part of the brain known as the prelimbic cortex…
A new study demonstrates that cooperation between the hippocampus, best known for its critical role in learning and memory, and a principal downstream cortical target modulates anxiety-related behaviors in mice…
Why do we like to return to places we’ve been before, whether it is home or a favourite coffee shop or even the same chair in that coffee shop? Could it be that when stress levels are high, we tend to establish and feel attracted to these preferred places? Canadian and Israeli researchers have found that what appears to be random travelling of mice is actually a pattern…
Most of life’s circumstances are beyond our control. Family, work and busy schedules can bring all of us a certain amount of stress and anxiety. In my work with patients with difficulty managing their weight, stress is often reported as the number one thing that triggers emotional eating, which means reaching for food for comfort and support rather than asking for help…
There may well be another important reason for giving your sweetheart sweets for Valentine’s Day besides the traditional romantic one: The “chocolate cure” for emotional stress is now getting new support from a clinical trial published online in ACS’ Journal of Proteome Research…
After shrinking in 2009, the world economy is expected to grow in 2010 and 2011, the World Bank predicted in a report issued Wednesday, Agence France-Presse reports in a piece that outlines the bank’s predictions (Smith, 1/20). “[T]he report concluded that the [economic] crisis had ‘provoked large-scale human suffering,’” the New York Times writes…
Social anxiety disorder or social anxiety is an excessive emotional discomfort, anxiety, fear or worry about social situations. The individual is exceptionally worried about social situations, being evaluated or scrutinized by other people – there is a heightened fear of interactions with others. Social anxiety disorder is sometimes referred to as social phobia…
First it was exercise on prescription, then it was arts on prescription, soon it could be singing on prescription, as the clinical evidence builds up, and as more and more projects promote the benefits of singing to health and wellbeing, both for those in generally good health and those with physical and mental health problems, or who find themselves socially excluded or isolated…
Stress is one of the most frequently used ‘buzz words’ across Western societies with an array of meanings ranging from scientifically defined experimental conditions for laboratory animals to a casual word for a nuisance. In humans, stress is mostly used as a term for psychological hardship and it causes a variety of conditions with, psychological, medical and sociological implications…
The University of Plymouth is to provide £500,000 funding for the Peninsula Dental School to pursue three important areas of research in partnership with the University. The first area of research will cover statistical epidemiology in oral health, including the review of published evidence and the creation of new approaches to understanding the complexity of dental research data…
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